Our example, though, requires explanations, the kind the Founders gave to the world. And this is where we are failing: the dominant schools in American universities can tell the Chinese students only that they should avoid Eurocentrism, that rationalism has failed, that they should study non-Western cultures, and that bourgeois liberalism is the... See more

In Return of the Strong Gods , I do not tackle big questions about the origins of modernity and our condition of disenchantment. I focus on the events of the twentieth century, which, I argue, led to the dominance of creativity, innovation, transgression, and “openness.” But the winds of change are blowing. The open society—a creature of the... See more

Twenty-five years ago Allan Bloom proclaimed a heresy: The supposed idealism of the 1960s was in fact a veneer hiding a new barbarism. He saw that our elite liberal culture has a very definite vision, however much it talks about diversity, multiculturalism, and the like: the relativism of moral truth. This anti-dogmatic dogma, he thought, is... See more